Sentenced
by Pickyourownadventurecontest
Summary: Many people would call me a heartless killer, a fiend, a monster. I wouldn't argue with that. An entry for the Pick Your Own Adventure contest.


**Pick Your Own Adventure O/S Contest**

**Title:** Sentenced

**Rating:** M for violence and disturbing themes

**Word count:** 2522

**Pairing:** Edward and Bella

**Words selected:** Wedding, Jail, Bliss, Knife, Malicious

**Summary:** Many people would call me a heartless killer, a fiend, a monster. I wouldn't argue with that. An entry for the Pick Your Own Adventure contest.

**Disclaimer:** Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I don't.

My name is Edward Cullen, and I'm a murderer. Tried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

My name is Edward Cullen, and I'm a vampire. Killed, changed, and sentenced to immortality.

Many people would call me a heartless killer, a fiend, a monster. I wouldn't argue with that. If they knew I was a vampire as well, they'd simply have more proof. As it is, well. Like I said, I'm a murderer.

Let me start from the beginning.

It starts with a girl. Don't these things always start with a girl? Many years ago, I met her. She was beautiful, and delicious, and just barely irresistible. I kept myself from killing her, drew on the love I had around me, and fought back the monster within.

I fell in love with her.

We were young fools. She was young, and I was a fool. I loved her with a strength, a passion, a madness I'd never experienced before. I did everything I could to keep her from harm, I watched over her as she slept, I followed her when she thought she was alone. I fought my enemies to save her, when giving in would have been so much easier.

I won.

She lived, and I persuaded her to love me, and we were happy. She was happy. I was afraid. Constantly scared of what could happen to her, with her vulnerability, her fragility, her innocence. Have you ever seen a frightened monster? They are so much more dangerous. All that strength, all that power, wound tighter and tighter and tighter, until the tiniest of triggers could unleash it.

She loved me, she said. She said she wanted to be with me forever. I told her she didn't know what forever was. She said she could, if I helped her.

I told her no. Over and over and over, I told her no.

She wanted to be with me, to live with me as couples do. I asked her to marry me.

She told me no.

We both lived those days in a storm of wanting, neither wanting the same thing, both of us needing the other. I wanted peace, safety, and lawful marriage. She wanted danger, thrills, and ecstasy.

We were both too stubborn. Neither gave way, and we lived in an uneasy truce of love, celibacy, and frustration.

Monsters are better at playing the long game. She gave in first. But not to marry me, no. No, she gathered her strength, and she left me. She told me if I couldn't let go of my outdated ideals as well as my fear, I would only suffocate her, stop her living her life. If I couldn't end her life so she could spend immortality with me, she wanted to live and love like anyone else. She couldn't and wouldn't deal with a mortal life of misery and wanting.

Who was I to stop her?

She lived her life, studying, laughing, living, but never loving as we two had loved.

I watched.

Slowly, so slowly, she forgot me.

I never forgot her. I went with her, everywhere. I kept her safe when her foolish trust would have brought her pain and destruction. I listened to the minds around her, satisfying the frightened monster that she was safe. I scaled the walls and crept into her home, breathing her scent, watching over her, keeping guard.

She met a new man. He was as different to me as day from night. He was the sun where I was the moon, he was joy where I was fear, he was love and laughter and recklessness where I was love and pain and hopelessness.

She loved him easily. I hated him. He didn't know how to keep her safe, how to treat her as she deserved to be treated. He thought love was enough, that that was all they needed. That they would be happy, with only love between them. He thought as I had thought.

I watched, and I burned. It wouldn't last. She'd leave him as she left me, and I would glory in his pain and desperation as he watched her go.

She didn't leave. He was always there, always loving, always laughing.

He asked her what I had asked her, and I waited for her to tell him no.

She told him yes.

It was then that I took my first step on the road to this jail cell, then that I climbed on the downbound train and started the long descent into hell. I've been damned for a long time.

I watched them planning, picking flowers and favours and a hundred other tiny details. I watched her having hair trials, make-up trials, and dress fittings. She was beautiful. This is how she would have looked on the day she would have married me. You should have seen her, an angel in white.

I followed her as she danced the night away with all of her girlfriends. I watched her drink too much and flirt outrageously with every man who spoke to her. I smiled, sure that _he_ would have hated it.

Quickly, all too quickly, their wedding crept closer and closer. When you are immortal, months pass like seconds.

I watched as she hugged and kissed him, their parting joyous, their reunion the following day the moment they'd both been waiting , longing for. I watched as she checked into the hotel, where she was to spend her last night of unmarried life. I watched as her friends, her family left her alone, one by one. I watched as she slept, one last time.

I whispered her name in her ear, and she woke, smiling. She was pleased to see me, innocent of the dark thoughts swirling in my maddened brain. We talked, and I gloried in the sound of her voice, speaking to me, only to me. I smiled at her, and it was returned. I congratulated her, and she hugged me. She wrapped her arms around me, and I pulled her out of her bed and waltzed her around the room. She laughed, and the echo of our past love shone from her eyes.

I kissed her, tiny pattering kisses along her neck, her jaw, her shoulder. She giggled, and tried to avoid me. I kept on kissing her, teasing her, tickling her. She laughed and squirmed, and called my name, pushing at my chest, pretending she wanted me to leave.

I stopped, and I held her close and I told her I loved her.

She fell serious then, her eyes growing big and round. I put a finger to her lips, stopped her from speaking, and pulled her close once more. Her arms tightened around me, sorrowful, apologetic, and I knew her innocence had not left her. She had no idea of what a frightened, spurned monster could do.

She held me, and I tucked my face into her shoulder. I could feel her pulse, strong with love for me, beating under her skin. I sank my teeth slowly, gently through her skin, every movement driven by love. I had one hand over her mouth, her legs held between mine, and her blood coursing down my throat. She was hot, warm, and divine. How do I describe it? It was an epiphany, an ecstasy, a blissful rush of pleasure and perfection. She was mine, only mine, and she was all I wanted, and I was all she had. I held her and loved her as I drank from her, until she grew still. I laid her down on the bed, my beautiful girl, my only love. She was too weak to move, just her eyes watching me, tears running down her face as the pain consumed her.

I took my knife, and I drew the sharp, cold steel softly through her skin, obscuring my marks, giving the appearance of a human kill. I lay with her as the last of her blood poured down her throat, soaking into the bed. I lay with her, smoothed her hair from her face, kissed away her tears, and sang sweet lullabies.

She closed her eyes, and we both waited. I listened to her heart, faltering beats growing further apart. At last, there were no more.

I stayed in that room, where I'd heard her for the last time, where she'd laughed and loved and held me for the last time. I stayed there, holding her hand and watching the blood on the sheets congeal and dry. The ecstasy within me was still alive, spreading warmth and joy through me even as her body was so still. In me, she would never die, never leave me. I could taste her in the air, the thick scent of her blood flooding the room.

Eventually the morning light filtered through, and the sounds and thoughts of the people nearby became too numerous to ignore. I waited, unmoving, for the inevitable knock at the door. Her friends, family, knocking and laughing and calling for her. The growing panic as no answering joyous shouts were forthcoming. The consultation and arguments with the manager, leading to hysterics and eventual capitulation. The sound of the door opening. The screaming. So much screaming.

I didn't turn, didn't react, didn't look. Just listened to the repeating horror in their minds, the names they invented for me. Killer, fiend, monster. Yes.

I could have stayed, could have stopped them all, could have refused to be parted from her. I forced myself to be human, to let myself be dragged upright and led away. I'm a murderer, after all. I should have to face the punishment like anyone else.

The trial didn't take long. They don't, when you stand in the dock and declare yourself guilty. They asked me why I did it. They didn't understand when I told them it was because I loved her. They asked me why I did it _when_ I did it, and there was uproar. I pointed at _him_, and told them. I told them it was because she was mine, and this way I wouldn't have to deal with _him_. He wasn't going to be there, she was going to be alone, he would not be able to save her. I watched him as the tears ran down his face and he rippled with anger, the men with him ranged around, surrounding him with love and obedience. They would have killed me, if he'd asked them to.

They couldn't do it. Not there, not then.

Some nights, sitting in my cell, when the wind is in the right direction, I can hear him, hear them. A howl carries well, across many miles. His sorrow is their sorrow, and his anger is their anger. There is no more talk of truce.

He burns with his fury, that he wasn't there. That he should have been there, should have been able to die trying to save her. He hates me for killing her, and he hates me for making him feel so helpless, impotent, irrelevant. He hates me, that I was the last person she saw, she spoke to. That I was the last one she held, the last one who held her. He hates that to know what she said, how she said it, he has to trust me. He doesn't trust me, doesn't want to believe what I say, doesn't want to know that as her life slipped away and her resistance crumbled, I could see into her mind, and her thoughts were not of him, and him only. That, at the last, a tiny portion of her still loved me.

I was sentenced to life imprisonment, and the papers clamoured with outrage. Life was too good for me, they said, I should have been condemned to the death penalty. They were right, life _was_ too good for me. I had her life, and I consumed it, consumed her, and it was so good, too good. I can still remember the taste of her. I will never forget it.

I listen to my fellow inmates thinking, all frustration and lust, and I realise they don't have the first idea about either. Over a hundred years of waiting for a consummation is real frustration, and the realisation of that consummation is real lust. The mere act of fornication pales in comparison. All that pushing and pulling and gasping and squirting is ridiculous. The power and the glory of a kill is so much more, and it lasts so much longer. If I'd not loved her as much as I did, I could have done it differently, could have kept her alive for days, the bliss lasting all that time. As it was, I'd had limited time, and I was selfish. I've never been good at sharing. I couldn't risk the possibility of her living.

I've been asked if I did it when I did to be malicious, out of jealousy, to make _him_ feel as bad as it is possible to feel. The questioners always miss the point. It was never about him. It was always her. She was mine. If she chose to live her life without me, that was fine. But I couldn't let her live her life with someone else. It wouldn't have mattered who that was – _him_, or another him, or a her, it's irrelevant. She was mine.

I've been asked if I regret what I've done. Do you think I sound like I regret it? Most of the others in here with me have secret regrets, whether they regret their killing, or their methods, or simply the fact that they got caught. I have no regrets.

I listen to my colleagues, listen to what they think of me. They've been called heartless, despicable, relentless. They're afraid of me. They think there's something wrong with me, that there was too much pleasure, not enough anger. Each one of them watches his back when I'm near, each one of them lets me by. Even such as these can recognise something more dangerous than they. Fools. Like the others, like the innocents, they don't understand why I would want to kill her. Why their lives are safe.

I have been refused parole over and over again. Apparently, although my behaviour is impeccable, I show no remorse, and they cannot assure the safety of the public.

Well, no, I don't show remorse. I liked it.

I will never regret killing her, like I will never regret loving her. The two go hand in hand. The only regret I do have is that killing her meant losing her, and losing her is hard.

But I have a life sentence to get used to living without her. Time is all I have, and it means so little. I can spend a human lifetime remembering her in peace, and then I will die. And then I will rise, and live once more, as someone new.

But, for now, for the next fifty years or so, I'm Edward Cullen, and I'm a murderer. Be careful out there. Take care of yourself, your children, your grandchildren. Loving is never safe.


End file.
